Craig Calcaterra

The biggest star on the Kansas City Royals was Zack Greinke. With him gone, James Dornbrook of KC Biz Beat wonders how the team will go about marketing itself. He asked Royals spokesman Toby Cook. The response: Cook said that right now, the Royals will focus on marketing the ball park and slowly introduce the…

My friend Ethan Stock — the same one who suggested that I make that list of pitchers who lead a given decade in wins — made a graph for us. His comment in the email accompanying the graph is Quote of the Day material: “Saying Jack Morris is a Hall of Fame pitcher because he…

This morning I noted how random and misleading it was to give credit to Jack Morris for being the winningest pitcher of the 1980s. After reading it, my friend Ethan suggested that I try to figure out who the winningest pitchers were for decades that happened to intersect with the 1980s. So I did. Here…

Buster Olney’s Hall of Fame selections are buried in his column today. He doesn’t explain his picks there, but I think it’s safe to say that no one will have a ballot quite like his: Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro, Tim Raines, Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell, and Mark McGwire. There’s obviously no PED stigma for Olney (which he has explained in…

The Orioles have a three-year $21 million offer on the table to Adam LaRoche. For reasons that remain unclear, he has not jumped at it yet. Realizing that maybe going three-years on LaRoche isn’t the best idea, they have reportedly contacted Derrek Lee, who may be amenable to a one-year deal. Makes sense. Know what…

Don Walker of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the Zack Greinke deal is going over well with Brewers fans: Rick Schlesinger, the team’s executive vice president for business operations, said Tuesday that between Sunday afternoon and Monday night the team sold 1,100 new season-ticket packages. “Those are brand new account holders whom I’m convinced wouldn’t…

Jerry Crasnick reports that the Mets, Nationals, Pirates, Rangers and Yankees have shown interest in Jeff Francis, who most recently pitched for the Rockies. Some of those other teams have been mentioned before, but this is the first time anyone has reported the Yankees’ interest. As Drew noted over the weekend, Francis was rusty at times…

Brandon Webb is being pursued by the Rangers, Cubs and maybe the Nationals. And, according to Jerry Crasnick, there’s “an unidentified NL Central team” interested as well. You can’t fool me with your calm, precise and non-inflammatory rhetoric, Jerry. That’s a mystery team. Don’t worry, I’m a lawyer and I checked. You don’t have to pay…

So much of the Hall of Fame support for Jack Morris is premised on the idea that he won more games in the 80s than anyone. FanHouse’s John Hickey wrote about that just yesterday. There are many others who have and will as well. Question: why does that matter? Any single decade is an arbitrary…

Dan Shaughnessy has a Hall of Fame vote. Every year he uses his Hall of Fame column to trot out his latest pejorative terms for bloggers or even just younger baseball writers. Last year he called us “stat geeks, those get-a-lifers who are sucking all the joy out of our national pastime.” He’s not as creative this…

Ian Browne tweets that Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said today that despite Jonathan Papelbon’s shakiness last year, despite the signing of Bobby Jenks and despite the fact that Daniel Bard is pretty tough stuff himself, he has assured Papelbon that he is still the team’s closer. And that assurance will matter until the…

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Angels have pulled their offer to Adrian Beltre off the table. They haven’t, however, closed the door completely on him, contrary to those earlier reports discussed below. It sounds to me that they simply don’t want to be used by Scott Boras and have their offer shopped…

Like I said yesterday, I’m not going to go over every voter’s Hall of Fame ballot. But we did touch on Pete Abraham’s Hall of Fame methodology last week, so now that he has released his ballot, it’s worth a look. Pete has Roberto Almomar, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Alan Trammell and Tim Raines. Damn…

Len Dykstra was on WIP in Philly with Howard Eskin yesterday. It was the first time that I can recall that he’s spoken at length about his financial implosion, highly-publicized bankruptcy and the like. So, Lenny, what went wrong? “It is very simple and it is called, predatory lending, meaning, look, I don’t want to…

UPDATE: Jon Paul Morosi says that Webb is expected to decide on a team by this evening. Correction: Morosi said Webb isn’t expected to pick a team today. I win the award for reading comprehension fail. I don’t think that changes anything in the analysis, however: the Rangers and Cubs are the front runners, but the Nats…

I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin Orris at the Winter Meetings. Two takeaways from meeting Kevin: (1) he’s impossibly, ridiculously, painfully young; and (2) he’s really, really damn bright. If any of us had it as together as he does at his age we’d all be running teams right now. Anyway, today Kevin has…

Our friend Eno Sarris conducted an email interview of little old me over the past couple of days and the results of it are up over at FanGraphs. Well, NotGraphs, which is where people like me who are afraid of math go for levity and more right-brained thinking. I talk a bit about my background,…

From this morning’s Buster Olney column: I’ve been trying to convince some friends who are Mets fans that the Cliff Lee signing is good for New York, in the big picture. Here’s the logic: The Mets are probably not going to be very good in 2011, and maybe even 2012. So, by 2013, when the Mets…

We all know that giving yourself a nickname is simply inexcusable. Someone has to apply it to you, T-bone, you can’t just pick it yourself. Similarly, you have to earn a nickname. You can’t just start off with one. And this applies to collective names as well as individual ones. I’m looking at you Stan Hochman…

I’m with the Associated Press’ Tim Dahlberg to the extent he’s critical of those who are lauding Cliff Lee for making some sort of financial sacrifice to go to the Phillies. Sure, there’s a bit less guaranteed money, but we’re not in sainthood territory here. Dahlberg completely loses me, however, when he goes off on…

I don’t read Roch Kubato’s blog every day so maybe this is just part of his shtick, but if not, this is mildly interesting: Yesterday passed without the Orioles doing anything. President of baseball operations Andy MacPhail might have made contact with more agents or rival executives, but that’s only an assumption. The media has…

On some level it’s liberating to bypass all of that difficult moral and ethical hand-wringing about a complicated issue and simply vent spleen. It’s not helpful or instructive, but man, it sure is liberating.

Actually, it’s not just a HardballTalk app. It’s an app for all of NBC Sports.com’s blogs, including Pro FootballTalk, Pro BasketballTalk, ProHockeyTalk and all the others called “NBC Sports Talk.” You can get it here. Word is that the Android app will be ready soon as well, and of course we’ll let you know when that happens.…